Woodlands Pre-School

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children are eager to arrive and explore the wealth of exciting learning opportunities in this vibrant pre-school. Leaders and staff make the most of this exciting and unique environment, when supporting children's development. Children have continuous access to outdoor play opportunities. They confidently dress themselves in their warm coats and boots and rush to explore the wooded area, creating dens, navigating natural equipment and creating delicious 'meals' in their outdoor kitchen area.

Children develop a love of books because staff create exciting play opportunities around their favourite story of 'We're Going on a Bear Hunt'. Children paint pictures of bears and develop fine motor skills cutting out shapes of the characters. They create an exciting obstacle course, where they recall the story exploring language and developing physical skills. For example, they 'stumble' and 'trip' over various stepping stones and 'squelch' their way through the mud they have created out of blankets.

Robust behaviour management strategies support all children to have a clear understanding of appropriate behaviour. Young children all follow the setting's ethos of 'my turn, your turn' during activities. Older children independently use timers to regulate the time spent in popular activities. As a result, children are beginning to regulate their behaviour and navigate conflict in play.

What does the early years setting do well and what does it need to do better?

• Since the previous inspection, leaders have reflected well on the way they organise children's learning. Children receive differentiated teaching that meets the varied ages and needs of children who attend. Older children engage in group discussions to familiarise them with their routines, expected behaviours and focus their attention for short periods of time. Their younger friends are developing these same skills in more age-appropriate ways, where staff facilitate smaller and shorter group activities.
• Staff routinely extend children's learning during activities, ensuring that all play remains exciting and engaging for children. When exploring a dinosaur sensory activity, children delight at making footprints with their model dinosaurs. They compare their sizes and explore their different names. Staff skilfully add resources, such as plants, when encouraging children to learn the meanings of more tricky vocabulary, such as 'carnivore' and 'herbivore'. They add stone eggs to develop children's critical thinking skills around which species of dinosaur may hatch from them.
• All children, in particular those with special educational needs and/or disabilities, form close relationships with knowledgeable and attentive key staff who have a deep understanding of children's individual needs and unique personalities. Staff use this knowledge to provide precise teaching and nurturing interactions throughout the day. However, at times, specifically during staff absence, the current key-person system does not support all children to consistently benefit from this outstanding teaching and support.
• Parent partnerships are strong. Leaders and staff regularly share information with families around children's learning and development via an electronic journal system. Parents attend consultation sessions, where they gather a deeper insight into children's time at the pre-school. Leaders facilitate close relationships among parents by hosting network meetings. Parents and staff share their expertise and provide support and advice to one another. As a result, parents report that they feel well supported and knowledgeable about their children's learning and development.
• Leaders encourage staff to become champions in specific areas of teaching, sharing their expertise during regular staff training sessions. Leaders conduct regular supervisions with all staff to identify additional training opportunities and provide feedback on their practice. Methods of coaching are robust, with staff regularly evaluating their own interactions with children and those of their colleagues. As a result of these strategies, the quality of teaching is strong, and morale is high within the enthusiastic team. However, further evaluation of staff deployment at busy points during the day, will ensure that all staff will be supported to engage children in consistently strong and meaningful interactions.
• Staff embrace children's observations when planning exciting activities that support their learning. Children create hedgehogs like the ones that live in their outdoor area. They develop strong hand muscles manipulating modelling dough and learn new words, when exploring the 'spikey' and 'prickly' sticks that they use for the hedgehogs' spines. Children develop mathematical knowledge counting these sticks and discussing and comparing their different lengths and shapes.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• evaluate the effectiveness of the current key-person system to better consider the individual needs of children, specifically during periods of staff absence
• consider ways to better deploy staff throughout the day, enabling staff to provide consistently high-quality interactions at all times.